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Tuesday, October 9, 2012

The 20 best Google Doodle designs

From Lego to Les Paul, MC Escher to Dr Seuss, we salute the 20 greatest Google Doodles of the last 14 years, including illustrations, animations and beyond.

The guys at team Google Doodle are a nice bunch. Not only do they like to say happy birthday to a lot of people and celebrate special occasions, they also create and share some seriously inspiring illustrations and animations in the process

Since it all started back in 1998, Google Doodles have gone from strength to strength, progressing from small tweaks of the logo to full-blown illustrations, animations and even interactive games.

As more and more people add Google search bars to their browsers, the ever-inventive Google Doodles give them a continuing reason to visit the Google homepage. Here we salute 20 of the greatest Google doodle designs of the last 14 years...

01. First human in space

On April 11, 1961, Russian air force pilot Yuri Gagarin blasted off on the first manned space flight in history. To mark the 50th anniversary of this amazing achievement, graphic artist and Google's official chief doodler Dennis Hwang created this beautiful illustrated and interactive Google doodle. With a design reminiscent of Soviet posters, the first 'o' is replaced by the cosmonaut's helmet, and the other a planet, which, when the mouse is placed over it, reveals a rocket blasting off.

02. JFK 50th anniversary

The Google doodle team created this brilliant illustration in remembrance of John F Kennedy's official inauguration back in 1961

On January 20th 2011, Google's homepage donned this gorgeous typographic illustration to mark the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, which included the immortal line: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." The Google doodle team cleverly took the words from Kennedy's speech and rearranged them to spell out the logo, with the second "G" featuring a drawing of the former president.

This comic book-inspired doodle was created in memory of graphic artist Will Eisner

Graphic artist and comic writer Will Eisner is widely regarded as the father of the graphic novel. On March 6 last year, the Google doodle team honoured his memory with this awesome logo featuring Eisner's famous character and comic series The Spirit - a detective who comes back from the beyond to fight crime. Appearing in selected countries only, this doodle marked what would have been Eisner's 94th birthday.

On July 24 2012, Google wanted to remind the world of the accomplishments and celebrate the life of pioneering female pilot Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. On what would have been her 115th birthday, the Google team came up with this simple yet stunning image of the aviator standing on an aeroplane, with 'Google' painted on the underside of the wings.

05. Les Paul

The Les Paul Google doodle was created using JavaScript and HTML5

Probably the most well known Google doodle is this playable guitar, which was created to remember the late musician and inventor player Les Paul. Launched on 9 June 2011, it marked what would have been his 96th birthday. The interactive logo was created using a combination of of JavaScript, HTML5 Canvas, CSS, Flash and tools such as the Google Font API, goo.gl and App Engine.

06. The royal wedding

Google joined in the royal wedding festivities by laying this illustration on its homepage

Awww. Google commemorated the royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton last year with this illustration depicting a horse-drawn carriage carrying the newlyweds through the streets of London. The image also features drawings of Westminster Abbey and the London Eye in the background.

07. Robert Doisneau

On April 14 1912, French photographer Robert Doisneau was born. To mark what would have been his 100th birthday, the Google doodle team honoured the pioneer of photojournalism with this gorgeous collage of his work. The doodle shows four photographs by Doisneau: The Tugboat, The Three Children, Dog on Wheels and The Kiss.

08. Lantern festival

Google lit up its homepage with this beautiful illustration depicting the Lantern Festival

Google’s homepages were alight with this special logo in Taiwan and Hong Kong last year. The gorgeous illustration was created in order to mark the Lantern Festival, which falls on the 15th day of the first month of China’s lunar year to mark the end of celebrations for the Chinese New Year.

09. Google zipper

The Google doodle team utilised HTML5 to create this awesome animated zipper

We had to include this awesome animated zip doodle that we came across earlier this year. Us, like many we're sure, sat and unzipped the Google homepage a few times the day it was launched. Clicking the zipper made the page split in two, revealing the doodle's inspiration: Gideon Sundbäck, the Swedish-American credited with developing the zipper. To create it the Google doodle team utilised HTML5 and the Canvas feature, which allows for dynamic, scriptable rendering of 2D shapes.

10. John Lennon

John Lennon's 70th birthday was celebrated with Google's first ever animated doodle

October 8, 2010 marked the first ever animated Google doodle, which was a short music video of 'Imagine', to commemorate John Lennon's 70th birthday. The interactive illustration was created by member of the Google Doodle team Mike Dutton who commented on the Google Doodle site: "The old saying, 'A picture is worth a thousand words' still rings true, so I hope a moving picture will help me adequately - and simply - thank John for the memories."

11. Lunar eclipse

Google covered last year's much anticipated 100-minute-long lunar eclipse in its own unique way, through this cool interactive doodle. Showing the eclipse in (almost) real-time, astronomy website Sloohprovided Google with images from cameras set up in South Africa, Dubai and the Canary Islands, to cover the entire event. So, if people missed the real thing, all they had to do was click on the slider underneath to see it in its full glory.

12. Charles Dickens

On 7 February this year, Google celebrated the 200th birthday of classic British author Charles Dickens with this beautiful doodle featuring some of his most best-loved characters, including Scrooge from A Christmas Carol and Pip from Great Expectations. This is another piece from illustrator Mike Dutton, which, when clicked on, led to a Google Books search results page listing Dickens' works.

13. Martha Graham

A particular favourite of ours here at Creative Bloq, this gorgeous animated doodle was created to recognise what would have been the 117th birthday of American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham. Featured on the site in May 2011, the tribute features five dancing ladies who spell out the world 'Google' with their movements.

14. Harry Houdini

One thing Harry Houdini couldn't escape was time. So Google decided to celebrate the illusionist's 137th birthday last year with this beautiful vintage-style poster, reminiscent of the designs used to promote his shows. The red banner featuring the Google logo includes an image of Houdini himself, holding on to a chain draped around his neck.

15. Burning Man

The first ever Google doodle was created 14 years ago, when the company's founders added a stick man to the logo to tell their audience they were out-of-office

Ok, so you may be wondering why this simple graphic has made it into our list. But we had to include the first ever Google doodle from 1998. The concept of the doodle began when, when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin attended the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada Desert, they placed a stick figure drawing behind the “O” in the logo to let the users know that they were “out of the office.” Genius.

16. PAC-MAN

Google doodle unveiled its first interactive logo with PAC-MAN back in 2010

Video gamers from the 80s were able to relive some 8-bit memories back in 2010 when Google unveiled their first interactive doodle, marking the 30th anniversary of classic arcade game PAC-MAN. Google doodler Ryan Germick and senior UX designer and developer Marcin Wichary made sure to include the original game logic, graphics and sounds, bring back ghosts’ individual personalities, and even recreate original bugs (!) from this 1980s masterpiece.

17. The Wizard of Oz

Google doodler Mike Dutton created this illustration to celebrate 71 years of the Wizard of Oz

It's not just birthdays that the Google team like to celebrate. In 2010, 71 years after the classic film burst onto screens, they decided to honour the Wizard of Oz with this beautiful illustration. The doodle, also designed by Mike Dutton, uses the lush landscape to spell out the logo and depicts Dorothy Gale with the Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, Tin Man and Toto the dog as they first spot the majestic Emerald City while on the yellow brick road. We wonder if the Google Doodle team will revisit the land of Oz next year when the film is rereleased in 3D...

18. Lego

Lego's 50th anniversary was celebrated by the Google team with this awesome doodle

Simple, but effective, this cool Lego design was created to mark the little toy brick's 50th anniversary. Lego clearly has a special place in Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin's hearts: they apparently used building bricks as the casing for 4GB hard disks, for a server they were making when they were developing the search engine.

19. MC Escher

We love this beautiful, black and white tribute to Dutch graphic artistMC Escher, known best for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. The Google doodle team hosted this image on the site back in June 2003 to mark the artist's 105th birthday. In order to be instantly recognisable, they picked one of his most famous works, Drawing Hands, to round out the 'O's in the logo. Stunning.

20. Dr Suess

This awesome illustration depicting famous characters was created by the Google team to celebrate Dr Seuss's 105th birthday

Everyone loves Dr Seuss, especially the guys at Google if this doodle is anything to go by. We certainly do!